Page 39 of The Murder Between Us
Cole slid his hand across the table, one finger slightly outstretched, reaching for Noah. Three inches separated them.
Noah slid his hand toward Cole. Their index fingers touched.
Cole beamed. He looked down, hiding his smile as Noah’s lungs stopped working. “We can take it slow, like you wanted. You’re not the first man to come out later in life. I can be with you through it, if you want me to.”
“Cole—”
His phone vibrated, trilling with the ringtone that belonged to his coworkers. Cursing, Noah pulled his phone out of his pocket but kept his fingertip pressed against Cole’s. Was John finally returning his call? Where the hell was he? It wasn’t like John to not answer his phone.
Jacob’s name flashed on the screen. Noah swiped to answer. “Jacob?”
“Noah.” Jacob’s voice cracked. A sob came over the line. It sounded like granite breaking, or glass being torn in two. “Fuck, Noah. We need you.”
12
Cole gaggedas they stepped into the house. Noah shot him a look. How many crime scenes—murder scenes—had Cole been to?
How horrible must this one be if that was how Cole reacted?
Noah should be feeling something. Anything. Instead, his mind worked like a checklist, cataloging everything in slow motion. As if the world were a film reel set on the slowest speed, individual frames freezing, then moving forward in clunky jerks. His mind was a camera, stilling each terrible image in place, burning the pictures on the backs of his retinas for the rest of his life.
The sights… and the smell. That Coed Killer smell. The stench of terror and destruction. Desperation. Fear. And death. So much death.
His eyes flicked to the kitchen. Blood and brain splattered the cabinets, the refrigerator. Two bloody handprints slid from the granite counter and disappeared behind the island. Melinda was down there, out of sight except for her feet poking out from the edge of the counter. The pool of blood spreading beneath her had reached her shoes. In another hour, it would pass beyond her toes.
He blinked. Cameras flashed. Crime scene techs spoke in low voices in the family room. His radio murmured with an APB announcement.Be on the lookout for anyone with unexplained blood on their clothes or their body. Contact all area hospitals and urgent care centers for any admissions with unexplained injuries or defensive wounds.The man who did this and got away wouldn’t be walking around looking clean and fresh. Not with what they’d found in the house.
He didn’t want to see the rest.
Blood spread like snow angels beneath the two boys in the family room. Melinda had wanted one more child. They’d ended up with twins. He remembered pride mixed with exhaustion on John’s face when he told the office. The unique exhausted joy of a parent-to-be when they knew exactly what they were getting into. The boys had grown since Noah had seen them last. Carter was in flag football, the all-city league. He wanted to start tackle more than anything else. Evan was content to build Lego and play his video games.
Evan must have convinced Carter to play with him. Both boys were in front of the TV, controllers still in their hands. They’d fallen backward and forward. One was on his knees when the bullet went into the back of his skull. The loading screen forSuperMario Odysseywas still looping, the bright, cheery jingle a horrifying counterpoint to the bits of brain and bone dripping down the screen.
Cole hung close to Noah, breathing shallowly through his mouth. His gloved hand brushed against the back of Noah’s. “Are you okay?”
Noah said nothing.
Voices floated up from the basement. There were two sprays of blood on the wall. Two bullet holes smashed into the drywall, blood arching from their centers like gory shooting stars. A long smear fell to the left, toward the basement door.
Bloody handprints led the way down.
The stairs to the basement were dim. Every few seconds, flashes from the techs’ cameras would burst in the darkness, spotlighting the streaks and smears going down the walls. The evidence tags fixed to the wall and the handrail.
The basement was a combination man cave and second family lounge. Molly hung out down there, away from her twin brothers, and had her own TV she shared with her dad. John had built a freestanding bar in the corner. How many times had Noah sat there nursing a beer as a football game droned in the background? Now, two tumblers of bourbon sat on the bar top, half full. The bourbon bottle lay on its side.
The TV had been ripped off the wall, the screen shattered. The old, worn, plaid sofa was on its back, cushions scattered. Battery-powered klieg lights stood in the corners, brought in by the police. It was easier to look at the edges. To stare at the destruction, the secondary evidence. The incidentals to what lay in the center of the basement.
Behind him, Cole’s breath hitched. He stepped closer to Noah, inside his shadow. His chest brushed Noah’s back. Was that Cole trembling, or Noah? He couldn’t tell.
Noah closed his eyes. Maybe, when he opened them, he’d wake up in his bedroom, staring at the ceiling. Maybe this was all a nightmare.
It wasn’t.
John Hayes’s body lay on his front, his arms reaching for his daughter. Molly lay on her back on the shattered remnants of the coffee table, arms and legs spread carelessly. Dark, vicious bruises ringed her neck. Noah could pick out four distinct black marks in the shape of fingers under her jaw. A thumb laid over her carotid. Her head was tilted at that broken-doll angle, her spine and the bones of her neck obviously ripped apart.
John had collapsed somewhere between the foot of the stairs and the center of the basement. He’d crawled through the TV’s shattered glass on his hands and knees. Two exit wounds bloomed outward from his middle back. Nine mil, the same caliber that had killed Melinda and his twin boys. He’d been gutshot at the top of the stairs. Stumbled down, bleeding. Desperate.
Desperate to get to his daughter.
